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The PSID is the world's longest-running nationally representative household panel survey. With over 50 years of data on the same families and their descendants, the PSID is a cornerstone of the data infrastructure for empirically based social science research in the U.S. PSID gathers data on the family as a whole and on individuals residing within the family, emphasizing the dynamic and interactive aspects of family economics, demography, and health. PSID data were collected annually from 1968-1997 and biennially after 1997.

In the Main Interview, one person per family is interviewed on a regular basis. Information about each family member is collected, but much greater detail is obtained about the reference person and, if married/cohabitating, the spouse or long-term cohabitor. Survey content changes to reflect evolving scientific and policy priorities, although many content areas have been consistently measured since 1968. Information includes employment, income, wealth, expenditures, time use, health, dementia screener, insurance, education, marriage, childbearing, philanthropy, and numerous other topics. Additional types of PSID data are available only under a restricted contract. These include but are not limited to: geospatial data below the level of state; mortality data; Medicare claims; and educational characteristics from the National Center for Education Statistics.

With low attrition and high success in following young adults as they form their own families, the sample size has grown from roughly 5,000 families in 1968 to more than 9,000 families and 24,000 individuals by 2021. Over the course of the study, the PSID has distributed data on more than 84,000 individuals. The long panel, genealogical design, and broad content of the data offer unique opportunities to conduct generational and life-course research.

The PSID now contains thousands of inter- and intragenerational relationships over 50 years of data, including (as of the 2021 wave):

• "Paired" generational relationships, with each family in the pair providing independent interviews
  • Parent-Adult Child pairs: ~4,300
  • Sibling pairs: ~5,200
  • Cousin pairs: ~5,400
• "Tripled" generational relationships, with all three generations providing independent interviews
  • Grandparent-Parent-Adult Child triplets: ~1,000

For information about earlier data collections, see Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID): Main Interview, 1968-2015.

In 2021, the main interview was updated to include questions about the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including: loss of earnings, US government stimulus payments, charitable giving, participants' exposure to COVID-19, and vaccination status.

This study examines experiences of health and economic challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic across generations of American families and how families responded to these challenges. To do so requires knowledge of each family member's characteristics and the contexts they experienced over the pandemic. Accordingly, researchers are creating a unique dataset that enhances the rich population-representative panel data in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) by linking comprehensive contextual data to multiple life domains of each generation.

Research to date has investigated the health, economic, and wellbeing impacts of essential work on couples using employment, occupation, and industry data from PSID. For additional information and code, see Measuring Essential/Frontline Work Using PSID (ICPSR 199304).

The ICPSR provides variable-level metadata for the data associated with this study. The actual data may only be available from the Principal Investigator directly. The variable descriptions available through ICPSR also include information regarding the source of each variable listed, as does the Data Source field of these metadata.